


Ashes

by xXScreenSaverXx



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, its not perfect but bear with me ok? :), no real plot lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 14:59:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18317618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xXScreenSaverXx/pseuds/xXScreenSaverXx
Summary: Prompts for Phic Phight 2019 (Team Human!)Ember is in town, but she doesn't want attention or revenge or power. Instead, as she stands outside the remains of a building long burned down, all she needs is someone to talk to. [Prompt by Wolfsongroar]





	Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> Yoooooo
> 
> Word Count: 2700

It wasn’t a day of any particular noteworthiness. There had been minimal explosions, any ghosts (one of which was, stubbornly, the Box Ghost) had only popped up twice, and Lancer had taken the time to chew Danny out about his English homework, _because_ _really, Mr. Fenton, whatever happened to taking pride in your work?_

The sky wasn’t red, the ground hadn’t started shaking. Hell, it was the middle of the day – a mundane temperature on a mundane Wednesday with all the mundane work in the world to be done.  Which was why, when Danny’s breath frosted Jazz’ car window over with the threat of a nearby ghost, he jumped at the call.

“Bye, love ya, gotta go!” he yelled behind him, twin blue rings of light surrounding him as he phased through his seat. Ignoring Jazz’ indignant yelp, he propelled himself through the air and came to hover just above the road – but not before swerving slightly to avoid the van that honked at him as it drove on past. The people of Amnity Park were patient and calm when dealing with ghosts one-on-one, but even they had little patience for assholes that crossed the street without looking – not even the already dead ones.

Danny ran a hand through his hair impatiently as he scanned the area. Upon finding nothing out of the ordinary, he flew higher and began to look around. Usually, the violent ghosts that haunted the town made themselves known immediately, without any thought of subtlety or planning. It was the ones that lurked around in the shadows that he needed to watch out for, Danny had long since decided. So, after a few minutes of searching passed with no ectoplasm, no yelling, and no energy beams being fired, he resorted to plan B.

“Have you seen a ghost around?” he asked too casually, leaning awkwardly against a wall as he pressed random citizens for details.

“No, why? Have you lost one?” One lady asked cautiously.

“I mean, I’m looking at one now,” another drawled impatiently.

Plan B never worked, he decided mournfully.

Danny sighed and pushed off back into the sky. It had been half an hour since his ghost sense went off, and if he didn’t know better, he’d assume that they’d just moved on. But there was a buzzing at the back of his skull, pressing for vigilance, that told him otherwise. He wasn’t the only dead person – or animal – around, and it was putting him firmly on edge. Eventually, he decided to just fly around and hope for the best. Of course, doing it like that almost never worked and always put him in a bad mood afterwards, but at this rate, Danny figured that anything was better than nothing.

 

So, he took to the air, following the tingling on his own core reacting with somebody else’s, as it dragged him across the town. As Danny continued he found himself getting more and more alert. Despite having claimed Amnity Park firmly as his own, and even though he was the widely-accepted hero of said town, there were parts that he rarely took the time to visit.

He followed his gut to the outskirts of his main patrol route, slightly to the East of Caspar High. It had once been a residential area, although a lot of the houses had been knocked down to make way for small business buildings half-finished parks. Now all that really remained were dour looking offices that were in sole use by the teens that would gather there to smoke on the weekends.

“Hello?” He called out impatiently. There was a good chance that any ghosts lurking around would, at this point, prefer to attack him than hide any longer. “Anyone out here?”

No response. Of course.

Danny sighed and turned to leave, before freezing as he caught a glimpse of wild, burning blue in the corner of his eye. _Crap, it’s Ember_ , he realised, quickly reaching for his thermos and readying himself for a fight. He crept forwards, turning himself intangible so that he could sneak through the walls of the building he was by, in an effort to draw less attention to himself. He floated himself through the wall, coming to a stop directly behind her.

The area around her glowed a faint blue, the light of her ghostly glow bouncing off the broken, scorched walls that partially surrounded her. The building was long gone, with abstract graffiti decorating the more intact surfaces and moss clinging to the ones that weren’t. The house – at least, it _looked_ to be a house – was rusting and moulding in tandem with few recognisable features. Danny doubted that even if it had had anything especially unique about it, he would have known anything about it. Even so, it was obvious what had happened – the trademark singes and singes, as well as the wood blackened by more than age and the dead grass surrounding the place in what could have been a quaint little lawn clearly painted the picture of a fire, long ago.

Ember shifted slightly.

Danny automatically slid into a fighting stance, green energy glowing in his palms, fully ready to attack her but… something made him stop, and pause for a moment. She wasn’t screaming or screeching, and she wasn’t even singing. In fact, Ember wasn’t making any noise at all. Instead, she just stood in place, hands clenched into fists at her side. He cocked his head, confused, before he noticed that she was moving, just a little. She was shaking almost imperceptibly, shoulders hunched over in an almost self-protective manner.

He took a moment to take in the scene before him. She was standing, back turned to him. Which wouldn’t strictly have been strange, if it wasn’t for the absence of her guitar, or for the way she stood with her legs braced apart like she was scared that she would topple over.

“Ember?” Danny called, voice uncertain. “Are… Are you okay?”

She tensed at his words like she was only just noticing that he was there, despite the fact that she should have been able to sense him practically miles away. She seemed to draw in on herself.  Ember, a figure larger than life, looking smaller than he ever could have imagined – in a way, it would have been ironic, if it didn’t concern him so much. He moved to take a step forwards, but she quickly stopped him.

“No!” She almost blurted out, a far cry from her usual articulate self. “Please don’t come any closer.” Her voice was small and shuddering.  Danny jerked backwards, holding up his hands placatingly.

“Okay, I won’t,” he soothed. From his position he couldn’t do much, unable to see her face or read her mood. She didn’t seem to be preparing an attack, but he couldn’t bring himself to just leave, knowing that it could easily be a ploy. He planted his feet and steadied his core, making it obvious that he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

To begin with Ember seemed unaffected, but after several minutes of silence, both ghosts were getting antsy.

“It was a house fire,” she started suddenly, breaking him from his thoughts.

“What?” Danny choked out, confused. She sighed heavily, sadly. Her voice was thick and heavy with that same sadness that seemed to cover the entire area.

“It was a fire. It was sudden, no warning.” She muttered quietly, still not looking at him. “No foul play suspected. Just… Just a regular fucking fire.”

“Ember, what?” he asked again, confused but cautious. Sensing that he made no move to come any closer, Ember shifted slightly so that she could see him, just slightly. The strands of bright turquoise hair obscured most of her face, but he could just about make out her shining, swirling eyes as they bored into his skull.

She let out a laugh, but there was no emotion behind it. It wasn’t her usual, hysterical giggle – that one, he had more than enough practice dealing with. But now that it was gone, Danny found himself helpless as how to react. Thankfully, his silence spoke volumes, and she found it in herself to speak again.

“The world ain’t black and white, Ghost Boy,” she shook her head. “You’re a living, breathing example of that. But for the rest of us…” she paused, searching for the words. “It isn’t that simple.”

“What isn’t?” Danny pressed. She narrowed her eyes at him, hair flaming slightly.

“Any of this!” she muttered, having her hand is a dismissive manner. “Amnity Park, the Ghost Zone, all of it!”

“Ember, I don’t see-“

“Of course you don’t,” she cut in bitterly, turning to face him fully. His eyes widened as he took in her red rimmed eyes, the mascara that had run down her face far more than usual, and her blotchy cheeks.

“Ember, were you-?”

“Shut it!” she growled, hair flaming viciously again. “Just, shut up, ok?” Danny nodded his head quickly.

He took a moment to look around again. His surroundings were bleak and foreign, having travelled into a part of the town that he wasn’t especially familiar with.  All of his nerve endings were singing out that he didn’t belong here, that he shouldn’t have come, but he shoved the feeling down, knowing full well that it was Embers doing.

“How do you think ghosts are made, Dipstick?”

He froze. The whole ghost-creation thing was something that Danny avoided with a vengeance. He’d discussed it at length, with Sam and Tucker (Sam and her morbid curiosity much more frequently), but he’d never been able to bring himself to dwell on the matter. It had felt offensive, felt _wrong_ to speculate about the reality of how ghosts came to be, preferring a Ghostbusters-esque take on it as opposed to the whole ‘spiritual echo’ deal, but something told him that Ember wouldn’t take to his theory very well.

(He’d never believed in the Ghostbusters theory. He knew full well how ghosts were made. He’d known since he was age three, perched in his parent’s lab for the first time. He’d known when he was fourteen, and his body was flooded by ectoplasm that _burned like hell_ as it surged through his veins. It was lesson that he never forgot.)

“They die,” he choked out, not breaking their eye contact for a second. She didn’t react as he jerked forward a step, not quite trusting himself to stay stable.

“Yeah,” she agreed. Her turquoise hair burned bright, highlighting her pale, sallow skin; her unnatural claws and fangs, and her deep, burning, _scalding_ eyes. “They die.”

“A house fire?” he remembered her saying before, the words forcing their way from his throat in short, irregular syllables.

The smile that she gave him in response was tight and bitter, and in no way could be called a proper one. She sucked in a breath, hugging her arms to her chest and sounding utterly _lost_ as she screwed her eyes closed tight in an effort to keep the unnatural, luminescent tears from falling. “They were good people. Maybe I wasn’t, but they were. They didn’t deserve that shit,” she murmured. “They weren’t rich, weren’t poor. Just happy with each other,” the words fell from her lips, jagged and hurting. “And with me.”

Danny didn’t reply. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see him with her eyes closed, because he nodded anyway. There wasn’t anything that he could say that would help, now.

“I wasn’t a good kid. I snuck out to concerts, played my guitar too loud too late at night. I slept around, threw tantrums. I never _listened_.” Her words were practically coming out as sobs now, but Danny made no move to stop her. He was frozen to the spot, an indescribable sadness balling in his stomach and pinning him to where he stood.

“I wish I’d listened to my parents,” she smiled heartbreakingly, unbearably . “God, how ironic is that? I just wish I’d taken the l=time to see how they were doing, rather than being so _goddamn selfish-_ “ she seemed to cut herself off there.

“I was a rebel child, you know? I always though that I hated them,” she chuckled hollowly. “I didn’t. I loved them to pieces and I never- I was too fuckin-“ Her shoulders shook, fists clenching. Danny could see rivulets of green ectoplasm trickle down her palms where her sharp claws had dug into the skin. “I was such a goddamn idiot.”

Tears, a deep and unnatural shade of blue, seeped from the corners of her eyes, despite her attempts to keep them in. Despite his – admittedly horrible – history with the teenager in front of him, Danny walked hesitantly forwards, placing his steps deliberately so that she knew he was coming. Seeing the way that her body shook, every cell in her body vibrating with emotion, he made the split-second decision to place a hand on his arm, ignoring the almost electrical jolt that came with ghost-on-ghost contact.

“I don’t-“ he cleared this throat awkwardly. “It wasn’t your fault, and-“

“I _know_ it wasn’t my fault!” She yelled. Ember flared blue, finally opening her eyes enough to glare at him, tensing to rip her arm away from his hand when he stopped her.

“No, I mean, it _wasn’t your fault._ Not the fire, not.. all of that,” he tried, waving his hand. “You were just a teenager, acting out. How you treated them, that wasn’t your fault. How could you have known better?” He took a deep breath. “Your parents had an obligation to feed and shelter you, but all that other stuff? Going to your concerts, helping you dye your hair, all of _that_? That was love, Ember!” He gazed up at her beseechingly, eyes imploring her to understand. “They loved you, after everything that happened. And they knew that you loved them, too.”

She as she gazed back at him, tears still dripping down her pale cheeks. Her movements were erratic, shaking her entire frame as, slowly, she jerked her hand up to his, holding onto it tight. “You really think so?”

“I do, Ember. I really, really do.” At seeing the way that she stared at him, eyes rimmed in red but wet with emotion, Danny felt himself moving automatically, practically surging forwards to encircle her in a crushing hug. She froze against him for a single moment, before melting into the contact and hanging onto him equally as tightly.

Her voice was trembling but terrifying as she mumbled into his shoulder, “You tell anybody about this, and I swear to god I’ll end you for good.” And then, much quieter, “… Thank you.”

His only response was to tighten his grip, shifting it slightly to help her relax into it. He was still, in a way, wary of what she would do next. She was a dangerous ghost, and one that had caused trouble for the town time and time again, and yet – _solidarity_ , he decided, was the best course of action. He closed his eyes and leaned into the hug, feeling the tension leave his body. He wasn’t heartless. And, seeing her like this, shaking like a leaf in his arms, but with a firmness in her voice and a fire ( _oh god, could he even say that anymore?)_ burning in her eyes, that let him know that she wasn’t any weaker for it.

 

 _If tomorrow comes_ , he decided, _and she attacks the town, I won’t be mad_. Because whatever she did next would be out of his control. But nobody should mourn their own death alone. Not when the fire of her fair was mild enough to barely even warm him, filling him to the brim with the desire to protect her, like Amnity and its citizens, despite the knowledge that she definitely wouldn’t appreciate it.

He repeated it once more, firmly. _Nobody should mourn their own death alone._


End file.
